We intend CodePlex to be the premier site for open source development – particularly for anything related to Microsoft platforms. It’s clear that in the past few years CodePlex has suffered some from lack of care and feeding and the result is that it has fallen behind some of the alternatives. So as we began to layout a roadmap for the future, it became clear that priority #1 is to demonstrate that CodePlex is alive and kicking and we are committed to evolving the service in a direction that our community loves.

So, the first task is to take a look at the CodePlex community feedback. As you can see, the #1 most requested CodePlex feature is Git support. Today, we are unveiling Git support on Codeplex (alongside the existing TFS and Mercurial support). To demonstrate the lack of momentum in recent years, if you look closely, you’ll see that suggestion has been there since 2008. I’m very happy to say that we plan to be much more responsive and you can expect us to continue to work actively on the list of suggestions. I’m not promising we’ll do them all nor that we’ll work precisely in the order of the voting but we will be working to make CodePlex a site you love.

As we are rolling out the Git enhancements, we are also putting the finishing touches on a new look and feel for the CodePlex site to give it a more modern look that is pleasing to they eye. I’ve included a screenshot here to give you some flavor for the style we are looking at. The design isn’t finished but you should see a draft of it go live on the site in the next few weeks. After that we’ll iterate based on feedback.